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Is the UN about to recommend decriminalisation of all drugs?

IT’S a hint of a truce in the war on drugs. On Monday, businessman Richard Branson wrote in a blog post that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was about to recommend that governments decriminalise all illegal drugs. A long-time advocate of reforming drug laws, Branson said he “could not be more delighted” that a paper giving this advice would be issued at this week’s International Harm Reduction Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The UNODC was then forced to publish a statement saying that the briefing paper Branson alluded to is “neither a final or a formal document”, and that there had been an “unfortunate misunderstanding” regarding the paper’s intent. It also states that the paper remains under review.

If such a recommendation were to emerge, governments across the globe would need to decide whether to follow the example of Portugal, which in 2001 got rid of penalties for the use of all drugs.

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David Nutt, chair of the UK’s Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs and former UK government adviser, says that he would fully support such a move by the UNODC. “For recreational drug users, criminalisation will do more harm than the drugs they use, and for addicts they need to be treated for the illness they suffer, not persecuted,” he told New Scientist.

An analysis of the effects of Portugal’s drug policy found that although there were small increases in adults’ use of soft drugs such as cannabis, the use of “problematic drugs”, in particular injectable ones like heroin, decreased. Portugal also has one of the lowest levels of drug use in Europe.

“Decriminalisation does not generally lead to increases in drug use or related harms,” says Alex Stevens, professor of criminal justice at the University of Kent, UK.